He’s also Gotham City’s best defense against familiar foes like the mob and the newly arrived, wholly original free agent of anarchy who calls himself The Joker.

Only he doesn’t want to believe this.

In new Gotham D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Wayne sees a hero a city can admire, a “white knight” who doesn’t need to hide in the noir shadows beneath a mask that makes him talk kind of funny.

There’s mutual admiration on Dent’s part too. Although he hasn’t much use for the smug Wayne, he mildly envies Batman’s ability to end-run the rules when the worst of the worst are just out of reach.

With Bale’s modulated, sinewy presense and the casting of the late Heath Ledger and Eckhart as the Joker and Dent, “The Dark Knight” takes its place among the very best (and arguably better) sequels of impressive originals: “The Godfather Part II,” “Spider-Man 2,” “Terminator 2.”

Conflicts abound in “The Dark Knight.” More than any other recent comic-book hero flick, Nolan’s tour de force provides an enduring, unsettlingly bleak fable of our moment. The theme of the lawman’s reliance on those outside the law to take down those who know not the rule of law beats at the bruised heart of this flick.

The story moves with a head-on velocity because it doesn’t have to rehash Batman’s psychic origins.

What you see is what he is: conflicted, smart, driven to vanquish the bad guys.

Wayne’s internal struggles are still here, embodied most in his desire for his beloved Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who has fallen for Dent.

Initially the baddies are a league of mobsters, Eric Robert’s Maroni among them. They’re trumped. For a moment, a Hong Kong businessman named Lau believes he holds all the cards. He doesn’t hold the wildest one.

While the director and his co-writer and brother Jonathan Nolan show the Joker consolidating his power (starting with a diabolical bank robbery), they never dive into his psychological back story.

The Joker tells more than one sorry listener his tale of woe. Like the killers in the terrifying “Funny Games,” he enjoys tormenting our wish to understand the roots of menace.

So it is Michael Caine’s Alfred who provides a reason that sticks: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

So, you ask, is Ledger’s performance as spectacular as rumored?

Let’s put it this way: The sensitive soul who made the anguish of a racist’s son in “Monster’s Ball” and the pining misery of a cowpoke in “Brokeback Mountain” so rending is nowhere in sight. This is how uncanny, how deliberately other the actor’s portrayal of the scarred, face- painted arch-villain is.

An evil clown has taken his place — not a Bozo but an even creepier character than the E-Trade baby springs for.

We spend the opening scenes of “The Dark Knight” (shot with IMAX technology) wondering when the Joker will first pop up. Cleverly, audiences aren’t the only folk wondering. A gang of clown-masked bank robbers gossip about their mysterious boss as they prepare to hit a mafia-owned bank.

Nolan and his gifted collaborators, chief among them cinematographer Wally Pfister, have whipped up a perfect storm of performances, moods and teeth-grinding action.

From the ATV-like Bat-pod to the beyond-GPS surveillance system, the toys aren’t merely cool: They’re believable, even disturbing in their reach.

Perhaps the best movies are precisely that because the onscreen gods are in the details.

Caine and Morgan Freeman return as Alfred and Lucius Fox, the two men closest to Wayne and most in tune with his emotional moral dilemmas.

Gyllenhaal improves upon Katie Holmes’ turn as Rachel Dawes. Her face-off with the Joker is foolhardy and appreciated. And Gary Oldman has more to do, and does it, with Lt. Gordon.

Some might tear up at the Joker’s scenario that has two lovers sitting in different warehouses wired to barrels of fuel. Who will Batman save?

But the Nolan brothers have written an even finer set piece. Batman’s not the only one faced with moral dilemmas.

The Joker has wired two ferries to blow. One is full of jump-suited prisoners. The other is packed with frightened commuters. Each ship has been given the detonator to the explosives on the other boat. Note to parents: “Dark Knight” retained a PG-13 rating even as it flies like a bat out of hell toward the terrorizing energy of something deserving an R. Youngsters may be especially disturbed at a sequence in which a child is put in mortal danger, his parents helpless to do anything but beg and weep.

In an recent interview with The Denver Post, director Julie Taymor (prepping “Spiderman” for Broadway) spoke about how the superhero comic is part of our national folklore.

Watching “The Dark Knight” is like gazing into a mirror on a waning moon night: chilling and mesmerizing.

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